Seating Berger VLD Bullets

[lougonl]

A friend and I are both having problems keeping our seating depth of our bullets consistent. We set our seating dies and seat a bullet lock it down and the next bullet might seat .008 different from the previous bullet and it continue's to change from bullet to bullet. We are both loading Berger VLD me a 7MM Rem Mag 168 GN and him a 300 Win Mag with a 210 gn. Is anyone else experiencing this kind of seating problems? Any help would be appriciated.

 

[ICANHITHIMMAN]

A friend and I are both having problems keeping our seating depth of our bullets consistent. We set our seating dies and seat a bullet lock it down and the next bullet might seat .008 different from the previous bullet and it continue's to change from bullet to bullet. We are both loading Berger VLD me a 7MM Rem Mag 168 GN and him a 300 Win Mag with a 210 gn. Is anyone else experiencing this kind of seating problems? Any help would be appriciated.

Your not having an issue, your only thinking that you are because your measuring the bullets from the tip. You need to measure from the ogive to get an accurate COAL. You need a tool like this.

Sinclair Insert Style Bullet Comparator | Sinclair Intl

 

[submoa]

plus pull your seating stem out ans see if it fits the VLDs

 

[Broz]

Your not having an issue, your only thinking that you are because your measuring the bullets from the tip. You need to measure from the ogive to get an accurate COAL. You need a tool like this.

Sinclair Insert Style Bullet Comparator | Sinclair Intl

Plus one! your bullets are seated the same as far as depth to O-give. But the way you are measuring them is picking up the variation in the tips which makes no difference at all. You need a comparator.

Jef

 

[lougonl]

Thanks a bunch getting one on order.

 

[Nimrodmar10]

The bullet tip isn't necessarily his problem. I had the same problem with the Berger VLDs. Using a bullet comparator to measure the length of the bullets to the ogive while using a competition seating die, I still get variations up to .010" from round to round. You can even see the difference measuring the bullet only while is is in the comparator. I get the same amount of difference without the case. The bullets just aren't uniform from base to ogive.

 

[bigngreen]

Pause at the bottom of your press stroke and hold pressure on your handle for a few seconds and it will tighten up you numbers also.

 

[Derek M.]

Correct advise above.

1. The time to worry about COAL from tip of bullet to bottom of brass is to fit your magazine.
2. For optimum uniformity, weigh every bullet and measure every bullet from base to ogive and sort accordingly. Personally, I get lazy and don't do this as much.
3. Sort brass by weight.
4. neck turn all brass.

The 4 items above are to tighten uniformity.

The other thing to remember is that you need a seating stem cup that is for a VLD style bullet as mentioned previously.

Finally, the ogive is not a single point on the bullet but a short distance measured on the bullet surface where all of that part of the ogive may contact the lands depending on how your rifling was cut by the reamer. So, even if you sort bullets by length from base to ogive, it may or may not make a difference as to accuracy and precision. So I only sort bullets by length if I have time and I'm not feeling lazy. I have found that in my hunting world and distances under 600 yards, it has made very little difference.

So even if you have 2 loaded cartridges where the COAL is even 0.015 difference but the OAL from ogive to brass bottom is 0.010 or less, this doesn't necessarily mean that they will shoot differently. I'd much rather have loaded ammo that is concentric on a concentricity gauge with a couple thousandths difference in length (with respect to ogive) as compared to exact same seating depth but concentricity is over 0.002-0.003.

You can see here the rifling marks. They are not a single exact point but a short flat length. So even though the overall initial rifling contact may be a spread of up to, say, 0.004 or 0.005 thousandths, if you are seating bullets and are still w/i that range when measuring to ogive, you should be ok.

I use the Sinclair concentricity gauge. This little tool will tell you how well your finished rounds really are:

clear as mud?